Development of the wastewater treatment technology for the mine ‘Ternivska’ of the Kryvyi Rih iron ore plant

ABSTRACT

Wastewater treatment in mining and mineral processing technology is a topical problem worldwide. The purpose of this study is to substantiate and develop the technology of complex wastewater treatment for the mine ‘Ternivska’ of the Public Joint Stock Company ‘Kryvyi Rih Iron Ore Plant’ with the production of highly purified water suitable for secondary use or ecologically safe discharge into surface water bodies. The proposed technology is based on the sequential application of the following stages: preliminary treatment of contaminated mine waters by coagulation and soda-lime softening methods to remove hardness, suspended solids, and colloidal substances; desalination via reverse osmosis; evaporation and crystallization of reverse osmosis concentrate in a vacuum evaporation unit; dehydration of salt sludge in a centrifuge with drying of salt crystals in a dryer. The treatment of mine water with an initial salinity of 80 g/L will give an annual effect of 1357 thousand m³ of desalinated water with a mineralization of up to 100 mg/L and 739.6 tons of mineral salt mixture. The purified water can serve as an additional source of fresh water for technological needs in industry or alternative purposes. The obtained solid salt product can be used as an alternative reagent for water-softening processes. In general, the proposed processing of mineralized mine water can be considered a zero-waste technology with clean water production and by-product utilization.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Iron-ore mining
• mine water treatment
• suspended particles
• desalination
• reverse osmosis

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in scientific journals provided in the References section and most of them can be assessed through http://doi.org/ platform. The normative document [45] is available via online link in Ukrainian language only. Other data are available within the article and its supplementary materials.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.